


Blood Is Thicker

by Aleph (Immatrael)



Category: Hellsing
Genre: And a lot more blood, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Except with vampires, Exploring the Hellsingverse with a trio of OCs, Gen, It's like a road trip!, Okay maybe not that much like a road trip, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-12 09:51:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immatrael/pseuds/Aleph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alucard was not the first vampire to rise from the grave and walk the earth. There are myths of men-become-monster in every culture in history. And most of them are true...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Battlefield

_Early Morning_  
18th December 1203 AD  
Altai Mountains, Upper Mongolia 

Feral red eyes opened under layers of snow.

It was cold. It had been cold for a long time, since the great orgy of feasting and killing and death. A carnival that had been cut short when it was struck down by fiery blows that burnt and ached even to this day.

But the ice and cold around it didn’t bother the dead thing that lurked beneath the pristine snow. Its corpse-like flesh didn’t feel the icy bite of hypothermia, nor was it inconvenienced by the battering of the elements. No, the only things ailing it were the wounds it had been dealt in battle, long ago. It lay where it had fallen after staggering away, strong enough to cling to unlife but too weak to move any further.

It had been there for almost ten years. And now, it seemed, its wait was over. The one remaining ear pricked, twitching as it heard movement.

Movement meant life.

And life meant blood.

Gathering its energy, the vampire wriggled up through the layers of snow that had fallen over it. It was a good metre or two down, buried under the accumulated weight of hundreds of blizzards and snowstorms. The steady crunching of footsteps continued as it tunnelled up, and it kept its ear trained on them. The beat was slow and irregular. Injured? Or just weak from cold? Either way, it spoke of an easy meal. And with the blood from that, the vampire would have enough energy to push its withered body down the mountains, down from the frozen heights to where humans lived. It could recover slowly, building up its strength, repairing the damage dealt to its body by spear and flame and restoring itself to the grandeur it once knew.

All from this first prey. A grotesque smile stretched across the half of its face that was still capable of such as it saw light piercing the whiteness. Careful now that it was close, it pushed through the last few inches and allowed its head to rise just above the surface. With the mound of its skull still covered in snow and nothing below its eyes visible, it wouldn’t be spotted until it was far too late.

Hunger-crazed eyes scanned the snow for the source of the sound. There! A human. Female. Young. Chinese. Wearing a simple undyed smock and trudging slowly through the snow. Somewhere in the vampire’s mind, beneath the part that was already salivating in anticipation, it occurred to it that the human’s clothing was thin for these temperatures. That must be why she was moving irregularly. She certainly seemed to be having difficulty, hunched over against the wind and hugging herself. The bits of her skin it could see were tinted an unhealthy shade of blue. The grotesque smile spread further, revealing sharp, vicious teeth.

The human was coming towards it. That was good. Better yet, it looked as though she would pass within a few yards of it. Shuffling about under the snow, careful not to disturb the surface, the vampire withdrew back down into its hidey-hole and found a firm footing to spring from. Then it waited.

The trudging got nearer. The human was talking, it realised as she drew nearer. It could hear her over the dull roar of the wind, speaking softly in an exasperated tone. It allowed its head to peek up again, nice and slowly. She was still alone, there was nobody else visible. Just her, muttering to thin air. Maybe she was insane? Wait, no! Human. Cold. She must be hallucinating. Dying. Weak.

Well, that was fine. As long as she still had warm blood around her core. The meal wouldn’t be as good as a healthy, warm body, but it was still a meal. The footsteps came within twenty metres, and the vampire ducked down again and tensed. She would pass close.

Ten metres. Eight. Six. Four.

_Now._

With a feral scream, the snow erupted. The thing that came out was monstrous. Its fingers were rending claws, its face a patchwork nightmare of burn and scar tissue. The entire right half was unrecognisable as having ever borne human features, and a single red eye gleamed from the ruins of the left. It was naked, though so emaciated and maimed that its sex was impossible to determine, and it had a huge wound in its side. Whatever titanic blow had struck the thing in the mists of the past, it had caved in the right-hand side of its ribcage and left the arm mangled beyond repair. Crimson ice filled the gaping hole, blood that had congealed and frozen to plug the gap.

But the wounds didn’t slow it down noticeably, and the burns had only scarred the surface of its face. With inhuman strength and speed, it exploded from its hiding place and tackled the peasant girl, whose eyes barely had time to widen before the force of the impact knocked her off her feet. Hungry fangs sunk into her neck, tearing through cold skin and tense muscle to get to the artery. And the vampire drank.

Bliss. A tide of bliss, as those first few drops of liquid nirvana touched its tongue. And then more, an orgasmic flow of lifeblood that made its body shudder as it drank its fill. There was nowhere near enough here to satiate it, but what there was tasted _so good..._

Caught up in the indescribable taste, the vampire didn’t realise until it was far, far too late.

The blood was cold.

Too cold.

A grip of steel clamped around the vampire’s skull, and pulled it away with inexorable force. It refused to let go, but all that accomplished was to rip out a mouthful of flesh from the girl’s neck as it went. The grip didn’t even slacken, and the gaping wound began to reconstitute itself even as the vampire watched, blood flowing back into the wound to rebuild the torn flesh. Healing? It gaped, unable to believe what it was seeing. It couldn’t heal like that. It hadn’t thought anything could.

But if ambushing her had been its first mistake, staying still was its second. The fist that took it full in the mouth was horrifyingly powerful, and its fangs broke and splintered like twigs under a sledgehammer as it flew back. It tried to will them back, to mimic the regeneration of the _thing_ it had unknowingly ambushed.

It couldn’t.

Struggling up, scrambling backwards on all fours, the vampire watched in terror as the peasant girl calmly picked herself up and dusted the snow off herself. Ice, it realised. Ice in her flesh, ice in her veins, that had been why she was slow. Weak not from cold, but from...

Eyes that glowed like embers seen through smoke pinned it to the snow. Literally. It was paralysed, unable to move a muscle, unable even to scream. A predator-become-prey, helpless before a greater predator.

A greater monster.

The peasant girl – no, the _vampiress_ advanced, picking up her victim with one hand. The wound on her neck had already healed. She cocked her head, considering the maimed and beaten bloodsucker for a moment as her fingers dug into its skull with crushing force.

Then she opened a set of jaws like a steel trap, and lunged.

...

_‘Sucker,’_ commented Ling cheerfully as her host let the corpse fall to the snow, drained dry. The soul thrashed for a moment as Xiaolian digested it, fighting against the imprisonment it found itself in.

Then the psychic presence of Jingfei moved in, like a shark cutting through the water towards an injured seal. Seconds later, the thrashing stopped abruptly.

_‘Just a baby, really.’_ Ling continued as Xiaolian continued trudging up the ridge. _‘Suck, suck, suck – it didn’t even know how to eat things properly. Honestly, the standard of vampires these days is terrible. You could do that from day one.’_

“I was a special case,” Lian murmured. Regardless of its owner’s skill, the blood had tasted _delicious_. Animals weren’t really enough to get by on, even when she wasn’t using much energy. She’d been slowly freezing for the past few weeks, ever since her last big meal. A wolf, if she recalled right, though it might have been some other kind of big dog. So weak had she become that she hadn’t even noticed her assailant until it jumped out onto her and bit down. She shook her head in disgust. She was slipping.

But now she was warm again, her strength restored by the blood and the unfortunate’s soul. The snow fell around her lazily, in fat flakes that danced and drifted their way down to the ground, as she trudged onwards.

It took her another hour to crest the ridge. Standing on the high peak, she looked down at the valley. The snow hadn’t covered it, despite the blizzards that occasionally raged across the mountains. From her vantage point on the ridge, she could see the line where the snow stopped falling, like a curtain around the valley where the weather dared not trespass. Snowflakes settled on her shoulders, unmelting, as she stood there reflectively and thought.

Ten years.

Looking out over the barren wasteland around her and the scarred valley below, Xiaolian mused reflectively on the past decade. Ten _long_ years. She had searched every corner of these icy plains a dozen times, gone over the battlefield spread out before her until she knew every inch by heart. Ignoring sleep for weeks at a time and surviving on animal blood and the vampires that had fled the battle, she had scoured the wastes of Mongolia relentlessly, in an ever expanding spiral, until finally ending up back here.

She had not found what she sought.

_‘No news is good news, though,’_ offered Ling. _‘If we didn’t find her, she’s not here. Not anywhere in the ice plains. And that means she got away, right?’_

_‘I’ve only been saying it for the past four years,’_ grumbled Jingfei. But she seemed to sense that now was not the time to test her host’s patience. _‘Ling is right, though. She must have survived.’_

“Quiet, both of you,” Lian murmured softly. She didn't actually need to speak out loud to them, and it tended to draw strange looks and whispers of madness from people when she did. But contact with people had been scarce since the battle ten years ago, and the habit was comforting. It was nice to hear a real voice during the long months of isolation, even if it was her own. “I’ve been thinking.”

The chill wind tugged and snatched at her hair as she moved quietly across the battlefield, nestled high in the Altai Mountains where the frost never retreated. She didn’t fear another ambush. There were no survivors lurking here. All of them had fled, long ago, too terrified to remain. Here and there she stopped, to brush the snow off an old shield or rearrange a grinning skull on its shoulders, tending to the remains as if they were an old and familiar garden. Her friends stayed silent now that she was in the battlefield proper, drawing back respectfully as old emotions surged along with the memories the scene brought back.

Without thick clothing to protect against the cold, any human would have been rendered near-comatose within a few minutes from hypothermia. Xiaolian wore only a thin hemp shift, but she had not been human for more than two hundred years. No breath steamed the air as she walked between the bodies and weapons, and no footprints remained in her wake as she paused to run a finger along an icicle-studded collarbone, or tighten a breastplate on a gaunt ribcage.

“I’ve been thinking a lot in the past few months,” she murmured, pausing in front of one of the larger skeletons. The vaguely canine jaws were ash-grey and the size of a horse. The ribcage, hacked almost clean in two, could have served as a boat keel had it been whole. “Izuyu,” she whispered, remembering the lurking monster in the dark, the lunging jaws and gleaming eyes and rumbling growl. This had been one of her creatures.

_‘Might have been the one that got me,’_ remarked Jingfei. _‘All I remember is the bite. That was after you were blinded.’_

“I remember,” nodded Lian, brushing thoughtful fingers across her eyes where the blade had caught her. She turned away from the monstrous frame, heading further into the battlefield. It stretched as far as the eye could see around her, still tinted pink from the blood that had rained from the skies as the fighting had raged on, freezing even as it landed. There, the broken bodies of men and ghouls lay across shattered wagons alongside the warped forms of the monsters that had killed them. Here, a ring of congealed carcasses showed where a group of spearmen had taken a stand, before something had boiled their blood and melted their flesh to slurry, leaving a dark pool of frozen ichor that even the cleansing snow couldn’t quite hide.

She sighed. “I think... I think it’s time to move on,” she said. The words were curiously liberating, after all this time.

_‘Great!’_ chirped Ling. _‘Where next? Back down into China? Ooo, or maybe west, into the Roof of the World! Or we could try searching up towards Siberia, maybe? Or...’_

“No, Ling,” Lian interrupted. “I mean it’s time to move on. With my life.” She paused, cocking her head. “Or unlife, I suppose,” she corrected herself. “Regardless. Ihctah is... gone. She’s not dead, we’d have found her if she were. Even if her body were burnt, something of her power would have lingered. So she’s just... gone. And after ten years... I think it’s time to stop searching for her.”

_‘... you’re giving up? Just like that?’_ Despite having advocated this course of action for nearly half a decade, Jingfei sounded shocked.

“No, not giving up. I’ll still keep an eye out for her. But I’m going to do other things as well. Travel. Explore. Learn.” Something small and furry shifted nearby under the snow, and Lian’s eyes flickered towards the sound hungrily. “Feed,” she added, licking her lips.

_‘It_ has _been way, way too long since we got a proper meal,’_ agreed Ling. _‘Or bodies, for that matter.’_

_‘South, then?’_ asked Jingfei. _‘Can we finally get out of the mountains?’_

“South,” agreed Xiaolian. Her skin darkened, shadowy patterns of formless smoke spreading across her porcelain skin. Her form rippled and shrunk, condensing down on itself and sprouting wings and feathers before drawing the shadows back in. Within seconds, a great owl stood where the girl had, its ghost-white plumage speckled with dark flecks.

Broad wings spread without a sound and beat down, lifting their owner from the ground.

And then the battlefield was empty once more.

...


	2. Mongol

_Late Evening_  
9th February 1204 AD  
Mongolian steppes 

Swift hoofbeats drummed a hurried rhythm down a valley between two sloping hills. The rider was in his early forties, clad in iron scales and heavy furs. His bow was slung over his back, ignored as he leaned forward in the saddle and concentrated on speed above all else.

The battle had gone poorly. He’d been weary and distracted, and missed the signs of ambush. Stupid of him. Jamukha’s forces had routed the company before they could react or defend, and the survivors had scattered, their formation destroyed, forced to flee or die. The man riding down the valley had been alone for almost an hour. He didn’t know where the others had gone, but doubling back would be suicide.

He urged his horse ever faster down the slope, throwing the occasional glance over his shoulder at the distant dust trails. His pursuers weren’t close behind, but nor were they giving up. There were a few copses ahead, but no real cover he could lose them in, and he had counted at least ten. Maybe he could double back into the hills? Or just keep riding blindly into the night; he might be able to lose them in the twilight gloom.

Of course, night came with its own dangers, out here in the wilderness. One hand strayed to his sword, the leather-bound hilt comforting against his fingers. Reassurance against beasts and men it may have been, but against an arrow it was poor protection, and he barely caught the whisper of the shaft’s descent before it slammed home into his horse’s flank. 

He had just enough time to wonder how in the hells his pursuers had made a shot like that, at the very limits of their range, against a moving target, from horseback. Then everything was the screams of his mount, and the darkening sky rearing up over him as it stumbled and tossed and bucked him to the ground before renewing its flight, whinnying in pain.

He could go after it. Perhaps he should. It had everything; his provisions, his saddle gear, his camping supplies... but the horse was lame now, and his pursuers were close on his tail. Even if he caught up with it, he would be dead within minutes.

He glanced around. There was a copse nearby. A small stand of trees, thick bushes and ample cover.

Something – a curse or prayer – passed between his lips, and he ran.

...

Far above, the cool evening air ruffled ghost-white wings.

_‘Hey, look. Breakfast.’_

_‘Funny, Ling. We’re not_ that _hungry.’_

_‘No, seriously. Breakfast. Look, there, in that stand of trees.’_

_‘... huh. So there is. Good eye. Lian?’_

_‘Hmm. Well, I am getting a little tired. And it’s not like anybody will notice.’_

_‘Excellent. And better yet, we might be able to find out where we are. Be sure to pay attention to that, would you?’_

_‘I said I knew where we were!’_

_‘And I said you were lying. Or deluded. Or...’_

_‘Jingfei, don’t. Ling, Jingfei is right. We’re lost.’_

_‘Come on, it’s not like “south” is hard! Just put the sunset on our left and we’re good!’_

_‘South is easy. Countries aren’t. Now hush, I don’t need distractions while I hunt.’_

With nary a sound, the pale wings shifted and their owner soared down towards the prey that she had spotted.

...

Lying still and silent under a dense row of bushes, the man watched as the riders drew near. They were looking around uncertainly – good, they hadn’t seen him come in. And there were fewer than he’d seen over his shoulder. Some must have split off to pursue his horse. They didn’t know he was here, not for certain. The distance, and the gloom of the oncoming dusk, must have concealed which way he’d gone.

His grip tightened on his bow, an arrow already nocked, the string already drawn taut. Still, he dared not fire. Not unless they found him. There were too many for him to take, even with the element of surprise – four or five, from the looks of things, all armed and mounted.

Sharp faces and wary eyes looked this way and that, searching the undergrowth. He tensed, but kept still. With his outline broken up by the bushes and most of his body covered by their deep shadows, he couldn’t get any harder to spot. Only movement would make him obvious. His best option was to lie still and trust his concealment. He forced his breathing to slow, letting air out in quiet, measured breaths into his fur-covered arm, where it wouldn’t steam in the cold air and give him away.

They moved closer, two of the men dismounting and moving into the copse with lit torches. One passed within a swordslength of his ankles, his boots horribly visible for a second in the firelight. As they moved deeper, he could hear them crashing through the trees behind him, trying to root him out. The other three – the clear leader among them, stayed where they were, surveying the shadows with a keen eye.

That one was bad news, and the hidden man watched him carefully, tensing every time those dark eyes passed over his hiding place. They were starting to linger on his clump of bushes as the other men began to return, shouting of their lack of success. If he shot the leader, he might – _might_ – be able to get off another arrow at one of the other two before they were able to react. That would leave him with one man out in the open and two in the trees. If he moved fast and used the dark to his advantage...

Something fluttered above him, ghost-white against the dusk. His heart nearly stopped. A ghost?

No.

An owl. A large one for its kind, and pale as death. It landed on a branch, almost directly above him, and looked downward. For a terrifying heartbeat, he was sure its eyes would fix on him, staring intently and giving away his position.

But no. It glanced at the men returning from deeper in the trees and fluttered out of their path, then went back to scanning the ground in slow, sweeping arcs, looking for food. As they left the bushes, it returned to its original position and turned, staring into the forest behind him with similar unconcern for his presence.

With his heartbeat pounding in his ears, he held his breath and prayed.

“Enough of this!” called the leader. “He’s not here, that bird wouldn’t have landed if he was. Come on, we’re wasting time here. Let’s try the next stand of trees.”

The man held quite still, barely daring to move a muscle, until their hoofbeats had receded and he could hear them engaged in tearing through another copse some distance away. Then, very slowly, he breathed out in relief.

“Thank you, little bird,” he murmured, almost too quiet even for his ears. “I owe you a...”

But as he looked up, he blinked.

The owl was gone.

...

Slowly, ever-so-slowly, the vampire crept through the undergrowth. It had been a long time since she had fed, and the need for stealth barely overruled her hunger. The other two men had borne torches; crackling fire that she shrank from instinctively. But this one, this one was defenceless. The only weapons he bore were of wood and steel, and they would not be enough to hold her back. Not when all she needed was a single bite.

Edging closer, she took in the scent of his blood, warm in his veins and just metres away. A tongue flicked out unconsciously, running over cracked lips and displaying teeth like a bear trap. Nearer and nearer she drew, crouching to lessen her silhouette, hands and feet set down with utmost care to avoid any sound. She could almost taste his throat between her teeth, so close was she to pouncing.

And then, as if warned by some silent premonition, he turned.

She must have made quite a sight; hunkered down predatorily on all fours, with drool-flecked jaws that would have given pause to a wolf pack and unnatural yellow eyes burning into him hungrily. Her clothes were tattered, her frame skeletal, and her skin was the grotesque green-yellow of rot. He rolled away with a shout, bringing his bow around, and she simply sprang. There was no further need for stealth or subtlety. All that mattered now was to feed. 

The arrow took her in mid-air, punching deep into her shoulder. It barely gave her pause. His sword cleared its sheath just as she hit him, and it was all that prevented her from ripping his throat out immediately. Instead, his forearms barred the way to his jugular as she tackled him to the ground, and man and vampire struggled viciously for the one moment they each needed.

She was monstrously strong, and he was weak and tired after a day of hard riding, but not for nothing had the clans rallied behind him. Sheer adrenaline and greater mass was enough to let him throw her clear, and with enough space to use it, his sword flashed twice before stabbing home.

Slowly, she looked down in surprise at the iron blade buried in her lung, and the two deep gashes that split her chest and stomach. Deep red-black ichor dripped from the wounds onto the soil.

She looked back up at him. And leered.

Eyes wide, sweating with fear, he let go of the hilt with a cry of alarm and scrambled away. She began to chuckle; a dark, guttural, mocking and triumphant sound that flecked her lips with cold blood. She stepped forward for every step back he took, ignoring the blade in her chest, eyes alight and hungry. Her wounds were already, sluggishly, beginning to scab over. This was no woman. This was a monster in human skin.

“J-jiangshi!” he accused, fumbling for the knife at his belt and cursing himself for letting go of the sword. She drew it slowly out of her chest, letting it drop behind her as she advanced. He was out of the bushes now, out in the moonlight, and though it was faint, it was enough. Some spark of human intelligence bloomed in her eyes, along with recognition.

“Temüjin,” she crooned in delight, the dreadful grin spreading wider than ever. He drew the knife, his heart racing, hoping against hope that it would be enough, and that his pursuers hadn’t heard the scuffle. As the thought crossed his mind, his eyes couldn’t help but flicker, just for a second, in the direction they had gone. In that quick glance, he saw something impossible, and the vampire saw her chance.

She lunged.

...

She lunged.

The owl had been large when it was perched above him. Now, as it dived, white wings blotted out the stars. The bird that hit the monster in mid-leap was a monster itself, easily as large as a grown man, and its talons wrapped almost around her entire body. Unprepared for the sudden assault, the vampire couldn’t even make a sound as it tossed her from its grip like a rag doll, dashing her against a tree. She lay prone for a moment, dazed, before snarling and starting to rise.

The owl’s second dive; talons extended, caught her full in the heart and throat.

A strangled scream was all Temüjin heard as the great bird of prey dug cruel claws into its prey, the wicked hooked beak darting down again and again to savagely tear at undead flesh and bone. Even the scream was cut short within seconds, and though the vast white wings and body blocked his view of what was happening, he needed no great imagination to picture it. Shivering, he started to slowly back away. His horse should still be somewhere out on the steppes. With luck, it would have avoided the men sent after it. With more, he would be able to find it again.

At the moment, he didn’t really care, as long as it got him away from the pair of monsters before him.

But it seemed that his quiet retreat didn’t go unnoticed. The owl turned, and in turning changed, like a reflection in water dashed by a careless hand. White wings became a heavy cloak, hooked talons became bare feet, pale plumage became paler skin. With a heartbeat, it was a girl staring at him. Her eyes were not an owl’s, but a burnt, smouldering orange; embers seen through smoke. She was young – or seemed young, at least. He knew better than to think she looked her true age, with the blood of another monster still smeared across her delicate face. From her features, she was Chinese, but she considered him with the clinical gaze of an animal, no hint of recognition on her blank features.

Knife in hand, he stared back, alert in case she decided he looked equally appetising.

She blinked, and seemed to look at him in a new light for a moment, recognizing him as more than a piece of mobile scenery as those glowing eyes swept him up and down. Cocking her head to glance down, she bent bonelessly, retrieved his sword and bow from where they had fallen with a single sweep of her arm, and tossed them towards him with another.

Keeping a wary eye on her, he crept forward to retrieve them. Weapons once more in hand, he stood, and bowed shortly in thanks, never letting her out of his sight. For her own part, she seemed content to simply watch him, as a child might watch a passing cloud, her slim form still blocking his view of the corpse. Though his every instinct screamed she was a threat, it didn’t seem like she was inclined to attack him.

Still, he wasn’t going to take the chance. Backing away, pace by pace, he slowly retreated into the gloom of dusk, sheathing his sword and nocking an arrow as he went.

Those bright embers in her eyes were the last he saw of her as she faded into the night.

...

  
_“Afterward, the Khan rode with a few companies to behold the strength of the country that he had won. And so it befell, that a great multitude of his enemies met with him. And to give good example of hardiness to his people, he was the first that fought, and encountered his enemies in the midst, and there he was cast from his horse, and his horse slain. And when his folk saw him on the Earth, they were all abashed, and thought he had been dead, and fled every one. And their Enemies followed after and chased them, but they wist not that the Emperor was there._

_And when they were come again from the chase, they went and sought the woods if any of them had been hid in the thick of the woods; and many they found and slew them anon. So it happened as they went searching toward the place where that the Emperor was, they saw an Owl sitting upon a tree above him; and then they said amongst them, that no man was there because that they saw that bird there, and so they went their way; and thus escaped the Emperor from Death.”_

From ‘The Voyages and Travels of Sir Jehan de Maundeville’

...


	3. Alchemy, pt 1

_Dusk_   
_29th July 1208 AD_   
_Guizhou Province, China_

Sharks could smell freshly-spilled blood through miles of ocean. They could pick out one part gore from a million parts seawater. In the natural kingdom, they were the kings of the crimson scent.

Vampires were not part of the natural kingdom, and their sense of smell put sharks to shame. If she was hungry and focusing hard, Xiaolian could detect a few drops of fresh blood from a dozen miles away, even without a prevailing wind.

Tonight, she needed no such sensitivity.

The stench of blood overpowered all the other smells she might have expected from a village of this size, choking the air like an intoxicating smog. She alighted on its outskirts, and inhaled. Flies blanketed everything; the incessant buzz of their wings a backing orchestra to the otherwise-total silence. The bodies lay in the streets, limp and cold and lifeless. To a casual eye, they could almost have been sleeping.

They weren’t.

_‘Well,’_ said Ling matter-of-factly. _‘Someone’s been busy.’_

Lian crouched down over a corpse that lay face down at the side of the road. The flies drew back from her like a black curtain as she approached. Like most beasts, insects gave her a wide berth as a matter of instinct. She ignored them in favour of the body. Now it was just meat, but in life, the corpse had been a woman. It was clad in simple peasant clothes, and a woven basket lay nearby, rice spilling out onto the street.

Rolling the cadaver over, Lian considered the slit throat in the same way that someone else might note a sentence in a book. She ran a finger through the dry, blood-stained dirt beneath the body and licked it.

“A day old. Perhaps two,” she decided quietly. “Not the work of our kind; there’s far too much blood wasted. Even a newborn wouldn’t spill this much.” She stood and looked around, frowning. “But not enough for it to be a massacre, either. And there are no signs of battle, nobody cut down trying to run.” Orange eyes swept across the huddled shapes, taking in their positions. “They fell where they stood.”

_‘Treachery?’_ suggested Jingfei. _‘If someone they trusted hit them quietly; slit their throats while they were distracted by something...’_

Lian shook her head slowly. “Not this many people,” she countered. “A few, perhaps, but look. There are a dozen just on this street.” Her nostrils flared and her tongue flicked out to sample the air, fangs glinting in the waning sunset light. “A hundred or so in the town. A traitor couldn’t kill on that scale without being seen.”

_‘Hey. Hey, hang on.’_ Ling’s mental voice took on a more alert tone, and Lian felt her presence swim to prominence amongst the choir of souls. _‘Do that again. I smell something. Actually, wait, no. Let me out. My nose is better than yours.’_

Lian quirked an eyebrow, but assented. Crouching down once more, she sank her fangs into the corpse’s cold neck. She paused briefly and frowned as they hit the jugular, but shrugged off her confusion and injected her power into the body. Lifeless limbs stirred, like a child reluctantly waking, and Ling flowed through the bond of blood to inhabit the newborn ghoul.

_‘If she gets to play, I want out too,’_ said Jingfei flatly. Lian rolled her eyes, but cast around for the next-nearest female body and repeated the manoeuvre. It was easier to raise her own victims as ghouls than random bodies, and stale corpses were even harder, but the extra effort was fairly trivial for her after so many years of practice. These two had been harder than she’d expected, though.

“Urrgkkhhh...” gurgled Ling’s new shell; an unintelligible death-rattle. Flecks of blood foamed from the gash that split her throat in two, and she scowled. “Kkrrkhh? Hrrgghhkk.”

With an irritated sigh, Lian bit into her wrist, tearing open an artery, and held it out. Ling darted forward to catch the blood on her tongue, and suckled for a moment until Jingfei pushed her out of the way and latched on herself. Lian let her drink her own fill before pulling the arm back, watching as the infusion took effect. Slowly but surely, the jagged rents in their necks wove shut, leaving the pale skin horribly scarred but whole.

“Kcck.” Ling hawked a gobbet of red into her hand, eyed it for a second, then tossed it back into her mouth and swallowed. “Ahh. Much better. Thanks, Lian. Though, urgh, why are these bodies so weak?”

“Blood,” Lian replied, frown still in place. “They’re missing most of it. But it wasn’t a drinker, and it’s not spread all over the town.”

Ling and Jingfei blinked for a few moments, then frowned in turn as the puzzle struck them. The eyes of their new bodies were already beginning to glow orange-red as they settled in; a telltale indicator of their presence that they’d never found a way to suppress.

Three sets of nostrils flared now, but it was Ling who moved first. She crouched low to the ground, features twisting bestially as she stalked around. Lian made no move to stop her. Even in a ghoul’s body, Ling’s more animalistic nature seemed to give her better senses than her host.

After a few seconds of triangulation, Ling’s face relaxed into a more human shape, albeit one screwed in distaste. “This way,” she growled, jerking her head further into the village. They followed her through a ramshackle collection of houses and onto another road, as littered with corpses as the first. Jingfei paused to examine a few of the corpses, as Ling stopped by the village well.

“Here,” she said, without a trace of uncertainty. “Smell it? Poison. In the water.” She hauled up a bucket, dipped a finger in and tasted it. Pulling another face, she spat off to the side. “Dunno what it is, though. Not lethal, I don’t think.”

“Some sort of paralytic?” Lian dipped a finger of her own in the bucket. She pursed her lips as she tasted it, forgoing the exaggerated gestures of her familiar. “Just a poisoned town, then. I suppose someone didn’t want the bother of a massacre.”

“No.”

Two heads turned to Jingfei, who trotted to join them at the well. “No,” she repeated. “It’s not just a poisoning. Look around.”

Lian and Ling obediently turned, taking in the bodies scattered around the village centre, then looked back to Jingfei. Lian raised an eyebrow, and Jingfei spread her hands expectantly. “Well?” she demanded. “You don’t see it?” She barrelled on without waiting for an answer. “It got everyone. All at the same time, from the looks of things. Look at him,” she gestured to a man who’d fallen halfway through a cottage door. “He was just leaving home when it hit. These two,” another gesture, this time at the bodies she and Ling wore, “fallen on the street with baskets of food. Over there, those three all in a group.”

She stopped, grimacing, and searched for words. “It’s like... like the whole village just dropped where they stood at the same time, whatever they were doing. Then someone came along and bled them dry afterwards. Like the poison didn’t do a thing un...” She froze for a second, eyes widening. “... until it was told to,” she finished slowly. “Xiaolian. You know what this means.”

She did. Her lips thinned into a tight line, still speckled by drops of blood.

“So,” she murmured, “we have an alchemist, then.”

She breathed out, staring off into the middle distance. After a moment’s thought, she seemed to come to a conclusion.

“In that case, we’re going to need more force.”

Xiaolian took a deep, slow breath.

Then she threw back her head and _screamed_. Colour drained from her already pale skin, leaving it chalk-white and cold as ice. Her eyes flared, burning bright enough to cast smoky shadows on the huts across from her. The scream echoed across the town, a discordant screech that dropped flies out of the air in their thousands as the power behind the command killed them in mid-flight.

For few heartbeats, the dreadful sound lingered in the air.

And then, with the rumble of many feet, the ghouls began to rise.

 

...

 

She smelt the temple before she saw it.

It was a sprawling thing; an old Buddhist complex with a seven-storey pagoda rising up from somewhere near the centre. It had obviously been abandoned for years; vines clung to crumbling stone, and tangled bushes dominated the grounds. Nonetheless, a hushed air of authority seemed to still cling to the ancient walls, an inviolate and stifling pressure.

More stifling still was the stink of blood, stronger here than anywhere else.

Lian had thought the town smelt like a charnel-house, but this was beyond anything she had encountered since the battle at Altai. Any hint of tranquillity the temple might once have possessed was smothered under a cloying blanket of death. The entire structure was _saturated_ with blood, its scent hanging so heavy in the air she was surprised the stone wasn’t stained crimson.

The stench wasn’t surprising. She knew there were at least four towns worth of blood in here. Nevertheless, there was none in sight. It was gathered at a single central point, so dense as to spread the overpowering presence of death across the grounds without a single drop leaving the source.

The pagoda.

Lian paused at the gates, her horde of ghouls drawing to an obedient halt behind her. They clustered at her back, a few moans and rattling breaths breaking the silence as they jostled one another. She ignored them, surveying the temple cautiously. It was fallen to disrepair, and the work taking place at its heart was easily as blasphemous as she was. Still...

She stepped forward, and let out a fierce hiss as her feet touched temple soil. Sparks spat around her toes, leaving tiny burns on the dead white skin. It _was_ still sanctified; the holy power lessened but unbroken by the dark magic taking place inside. Her opponent had chosen his ground well. She could feel the soil sapping her strength. Not enough to hurt her, but enough to leave her weakened. Even ghouls as strong as hers wouldn’t last long on ground like this; they would begin to rot as soon as they crossed the boundary.

She would have to do this quickly, then.

The mob of risen dead marched onto the temple grounds in their mistress’s wake, moans becoming gurgled cries as their undead flesh immediately began to sear and decay. Well, there were always more where they’d come from. Lian made no effort to conceal herself. Instead, she marched straight towards the pagoda as the clamour behind her rose.

Movement, at the top of the tower.

The man that emerged was old. Ancient, in fact. He was stooped and withered, bald of head and with a wispy beard trailing down to his belt. Richly decorated robes draped across his sagging frame as if they’d been cut for a much younger, stronger man, and his hands and chest were heavy with jewellery. He shuffled out onto the pagoda’s uppermost balcony, leaning for support on the low wall at its edge, and sneered down at the undead horde invading his residence.

“Another of you?” he scoffed. His voice was a thin, reedy whisper, but seemed to rebound to fill the grounds. “Tch. Vile creatures. When will you learn? My work here will not be interrupted.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Begone.”

Lian’s eyes narrowed. The chemical tang that wreathed the old man marked him as an alchemist, but there was another scent here. A strange, actinic scent-that-wasn’t, distinct even beneath the potent stench of gore. Her lips curled back for a moment, a silent curse against the difficulty of deciphering the not-smell with the usually-welcome taste of blood overpowering everything else. Nevertheless, she managed it, dredging up old memories to put a name to the strangeness.

The old man was a sorcerer.

“I will not,” she stated flatly. “This is my territory, and has been for the past year. You are killing my food. My kin as well; I don’t doubt. There should be dozens clamouring about this place; I smelt it from miles away. What are you doing here?”

He sneered in mocking amusement, revealing gold teeth behind his cracked lips. Those natural teeth that remained were scarcely any less yellow.“I am expected to tell a beast such as you?” he laughed. “A feral, rotting, bestial thing; base and impure and savage? Your pallor marks you freshly dead, and yet you talk to me as an equal?” He broke off for a moment to cough harshly, then glared down at her. “My work is sacred, jiangshi, and beyond your grasp; however much you might covet it. You have spent your only warning.” He produced something from his robes; small and glinting in the light. Lian squinted, but couldn’t quite see it.

“Freshly dead?” She repeated with a quiet laugh, stalling for time. “I’m older than you, mortal. I have been walking the earth for more than two hundred years. My name is Xiaolian.”

That seemed to give him pause for a moment. “The Pale Maiden...” he muttered, barely audible even to Lian’s sharp hearing. Then he rallied. “Very well, perhaps not. Your name is not unknown to me, Night Queen. I have all I need from your people. Leave the borders of my temple and I shall let you pass uncontested, and be gone from your territory within the next turn of the moon.”

Lian blinked, her mind suddenly whirring. “Blood,” she murmured. Then again, louder. “Blood. You needed the blood. A specific amount of blood.” She looked up at him sharply, a half-forgotten bit of knowledge coming back to her. “The lifeblood of ten thousand, perhaps?”

Dead silence answered her. The sorcerer’s eyes could almost have set her alight, so intent and hateful were they. She nodded.

“So the old stories are true,” she said. It was a statement, not a question. “You’re making a philosopher’s stone.”

Glowering, he set down the cylinder he was holding on the balcony wall, and rapped it sharply. Lian flinched as it began to turn. A prayer wheel. And a potent one, if its automated benedictions were noticeably purifying ground that was already sanctified. The ground seemed to grow hot and uncomfortable under her feet.

Well, diplomacy seemed to have failed, so it was time for her fallback plan. She would just have to trust in Ling and Jingfei. Part of her took a vicious satisfaction from the knowledge that she’d no longer need to hold herself back. She waved, and her shambling horde broke into a charge. Even the average ghoul was imbued with unnatural strength, and hers were far from ordinary. It might burn every walking corpse under her command, but she could have them pry stones from the alchemist’s tower until it came crashing down around his ears.

Unfortunately, he seemed to know it, too. No sooner had the first wave reached the walls than he barked a single word in a tongue Lian didn’t know. The syllables seemed to crawl from between his lips, like a reluctant insect. Shutters a floor below his vantage point banged open, pouring a torrent of sticky liquid down onto her ghouls. It ignited as it fell, burning a blinding, brilliant white that lit the night like day. Alchemical fire. She called her horde back with a silent scowl, as those in the front line were reduced to groaning ashes. So he had tricks, then.

Fine.

She hunched, drawing her cloak about herself, and spread it wide again as ghostly wings. A piercing screech echoed from a hooked beak the size of a short sword, and she launched herself into the air, talons twitching in anticipation of ripping the sorcerer’s head from his shoulders.

He pulled something else from his robes. An arrow; solid gold from point to nock. Even the fletching was gold; stiff metal fins branching out from the shaft. Instead of stringing it, he tossed it at her with a lazy flick of his wrist.

Instantly, it shot towards her faster than a crossbow bolt, leaving a trail of glittering dust behind it. She easily twisted to avoid it, staying on course to snap at the old man. Only the whistling of wind through the arrow’s fins alerted her to the fact that it had somehow _turned around in mid-air_ to pursue her. She banked again and beat mighty wings for altitude. But fast as she was, it was faster. A piercing agony ripped through her left wing, then her right, then her left again, and then she was falling. She shrank as she plummeted, her wings becoming bloodied arms and a tattered cloak once she smashed into the unyielding stone of the temple floor.

He had more than tricks, it seemed.

Lian tried to stand and winced in pain; one of her legs was broken. And worse, the holy ground was slowing her regeneration to a crawl. She pushed herself to unsteady feet with a growl, abraded skin sizzling where it touched the ground even as it slowly tried to knit itself back together. The sorcerer hadn’t even moved from his spot. He smirked down at her.

“Is this the extent of your power, beast?” he mocked, sounding far more confident than when he’d offered to let her leave. “Is this the terrible strength of the Pale Maiden? Pathetic.”

Lian stared at him, fighting the urge to leap for his wrinkled neck. Her blood strained in its veins, calling her to action, but she resisted. Caution won out over fury. She didn’t know if he had another golden arrow. If he did, another frontal assault would kill her.

Hissing angrily, she waved her ghouls – now considerably the worse for wear – back to her side. Turning to retreat, she had them form up behind her to block any backstabbing attempt as she left.

The alchemist, though, seemed less than inclined to let her go.

“I wonder,” he mused out loud, affecting a philosophical tone of voice, “what secrets the body of the Pale Maiden would yield. And what reagents might be gleaned from it?”

Lian ignored him, and limped faster. She heard him shuffle back inside, and return. She risked a glance backward, and saw he’d brought out something new. A garland of beads and a small clay pot.

Wait.

Prayer beads. A pot of... salt.

An exorcism.

She gave up on walking. The worst-off of her ghouls withered and crumbled to dust on the spot as she ripped her power free from them, thrusting it all into the few that could still move faster than a hobble. Cold hands lifted her from the ground and bore her forwards at a shambling run as the old man began to chant behind her. He cast handfuls of salt to the air, beseeching the gods to purge the unclean from the temple without the slightest trace of self-awareness.

Then came the pain.

The ghouls were first. The sizzling at their feet erupted as they caught light; golden flames licking at their calves and quickly spreading up their bodies to consume them. Unsupported, Lian fell, and screamed as soon as she hit the ground. She felt her skin bubble and erupt. The pain was horrifying, an all-encompassing, scorching heat. It surrounded her, fogging all her senses, burning her into ash. There was no way out, no way to get away from it, nowhere to escape...

“Enough!” she shrieked, and with an agonising flex of liquid muscles, she forced a wave of blood from her wounds, shrouding her tattered body in taint to douse the flames around her.

The golden flames flickered out, extinguished by a greater power. But the effort had cost her.

Burnt, battered and bleeding, Lian pushed herself up into a sitting position. The sorcerer was grinning now, a satisfied leer of triumph. He lowered his staff to point down at her, to finish it.

An arrow punched through his hand.

For a brief second, both he and Lian stared dumbly at the wound. Then he howled in pain, the staff falling from crippled fingers. Lian propped herself up, and traced the arrow’s path.

Jingfei smiled down at her from the roof of one of the temple buildings, still holding the bow she’d fired with unnatural strength. Her satisfaction was only a little vindictive.

“I know I wasn’t meant to come in until later,” she said, enjoying the moment. “But it looked like you rather needed my help.”

Lian rolled her eyes and gestured at the tower; her throat still beyond speech.

And three towns worth of ghouls charged in with a roar.

 

...


End file.
